


Crumble

by lukegrey



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Cheating, Divorce, F/F, Flashbacks, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 17:12:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8853460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lukegrey/pseuds/lukegrey
Summary: Regina Mills and Emma Swan have divorced and moved on, but not quite from each other. The past continues to haunt them as they struggle to keep their family intact: both survive on vices they swore to never go back to, but then again, even their own promises couldn't keep them together.Told in a series of flashbacks to present day.





	1. It's Never Over

**Author's Note:**

> First longform fic! I have certain plans for this story, but as of right now no trigger warnings apply besides the sex-related ones. I will post warnings if this changes. 
> 
> I claim no ownership of the characters of OUAT.

The snow was making it hard to see and even harder to drive – as careful of a driver she was, Regina couldn’t outrun the worst blizzard she’d seen since her son was born. But considering her life since then, the Maine whiteout of 2016 didn’t even compare to some of the storms she had endured in sixteen years.

 Naturally, Henry was the sole reason she was even driving in the middle of the whitish hell. He conned her into letting him take a trip with Ava, Nicholas, Paige and her family to Spruce Mountain for what she considered “insanely dangerous winter sporting activities.” But then the snow had hit earlier than expected, and, thanks to Regina’s lack of trust and patience, she decided to retrieve her son from the mountains herself.

 Regardless of the repeated warnings from her fiancée, her staff, and the National Weather Service, Regina packed her heaviest winter gear into her top-of-the-line Outback (purchased extremely recently after Henry first casually mentioned the possibility of strapping on skis) and prepared to trek north the nearly two-hour drive to the ski resort.

The storm raged on, and with every gust of wind that shifted the SUV slightly off-center, Regina gripped the steering wheel harder and harder, gritting her teeth with frustration at herself. _I_ had _to pick this battle to win, didn’t I? Make Henry happy only for me to chase after him the minute frozen hell breaks loose._ She was trying desperately to get in her teenage son’s good graces after all he had endured with his family in just the past year: changing relationships, separate housing, his first “two Christmases.” It seemed only fair that Regina allow him this once to leave her sight for a weekend.

It had been forty-five minutes and Regina felt she had gotten nowhere, the stretch of I-95 never-ending with the little change in scenery. She checked the dash GPS: she would arrive at Spruce Mountain at 5:18. Knowing it would be dark during her drive back, Regina sighed heavily and reached for her aux cord, hoping to dash away any other flashbacks so she could continue in peace.

Regina, like most good mothers, told her child of license-bearing age to put his phone away while operating a vehicle, never hoping to get “that” call from the police. But again, like most good mothers, Regina failed to heed her own advice and found herself slipping and sliding along the interstate as she frantically grasped the wheel to straighten out the car. The phone and aux cord whipped around the floor by the passenger seat, and suddenly flew into the air as the car began to spin parallel to the highway, directly toward the back end of a black SUV in the far-right lane.

“Oh my god! Oh my GOD!”

***

Regina rested her forehead on the wheel, taking in deep gulps of air as she tried to assess the overall damage to her car, as well as to her timeline getting to Henry. The passenger side had struck the back of the SUV, but luckily, due to the slower speeds of both vehicles, the collision caused no real injuries. But Regina now had a flat rear tire, and she knew it could take hours for a state trooper to locate the accident scene.

The driver and passenger side doors of the black SUV opened then, and Regina looked up to see the very last person she would ever have hoped to see in the middle of a roaring blizzard. The flash of blonde hair stuck out against the white walls surrounding them as the woman in question headed toward the Subaru.

Groaning loudly, Regina rolled her window down, allowing precious heat to escape and biting cold to enter. Snow pelted her eyes as she stared down her ex-wife, who was approaching angrily.

“Hello, Emma.”


	2. Hurt Like This

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's endless, the pain and love they cause each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for continuing - questions/feedback, please comment!

“Out of anyone it could’ve been on this fucking highway, it had to be _you.”_

“Please, tell me exactly how disappointed you are, I’m sure that’s going to help get us out of this ridiculous situation.” 

“There is going to be no getting ‘us’ out of any situation, Regina! Rose and I are on a pretty tight schedule; you can find your own way home!” Emma glowered at the brunette as blonde hair whipped around her face. “What the hell are you even doing out here, besides ramming your car into mine?”

Regina had gotten out of the car and was now leaning against the door, hat pulled over her ears and gloved hands clasped neatly in front of her. Though she wore a nasty smirk, she couldn’t shake the pang of jealousy at the mention of Emma’s current girlfriend, who awkwardly stood at the rear of Emma’s car, watching the exes glare at each other.

“For your information, _Emma,_ I am also on a ‘tight schedule,’" Regina said, air quotes around the latter words, “which involves retrieving our child from the godforsaken ski resort I regretfully allowed him to go to this weekend.”

Biting back her anger, Regina lowered her voice. “And I am sorry about the accident, obviously I will pay for this-” She stopped, watching Emma’s downturned mouth turn into a straight line. “What is it?”

Emma ran a hand through her snow-dusted hair and started to answer her ex, eyes trained on a spot on the ground. “We, uh, we were, um…”

Rose stepped forward and grasped Emma’s arm. “Henry called us to pick him up, Regina.” The redhead’s courage took Regina aback; until this point, the woman hadn’t even bothered to come inside her home when she accompanied Emma to trade off weekends with Henry. “Emma was trying to save you from the hurt, not that you deserve it.” Rose shook her hair back and straightened her spine, drawing herself up to her full height so she could literally stare Regina down.

Regina gritted her teeth, eyebrows knitted together as she felt her rage wash over her again, like always. _Now I have two of them using Henry against me._

Her hands curled into fists as she opened her mouth to take a shot at the unfairly attractive redhead, but Emma beat her to it and held up a hand.

“Babe, can you…do you mind waiting in the car so I can figure this out? Please?” Emma unfurled her arm from Rose’s hold and squeezed the woman’s shoulder. Tossing a glare toward Regina and then an eyeroll at Emma, Rose wordlessly stomped back into the SUV and slammed the door shut, making Regina jump.

Emma frowned at Regina’s reaction, but shrugged it off as she continued, stepping closer to her ex-wife and trying and failing to meet her eyes. “Look, ‘Gina, Henry…I think Henry doesn’t want to disappoint you, you’ve set goals and expectations of him, I just kinda flailed along with you…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “I’m sorry he went behind your back.”

Regina turned her gaze back to Emma, eyes starting to glisten with tears. Emma met her dark brown eyes, making Regina’s heart thud like it used to all those years ago, when her then-wife would console her and tell her things would fall back into place.

However, those days were gone, and Regina could have none of it. Not anymore. 

“More like _you_ and Pippi Longstocking over there went behind my back and dragged my son into it,” Regina hissed, roughly wiping at her eyes. Emma’s kind eyes suddenly hardened, and Regina took that as her cue to press on. “You and your whore of a girlfriend think you can sneak around and pretend to be the good side? Make me look evil?” Regina was fuming, but she was mostly acting out of confusion: _what did I do to push Henry away_ this _time?_

Emma’s face was red now, contorted with anger but also a hint of betrayal. Regina had expressed support for her when she began dating Rose, especially because of the unexpected physical arrangement they had come to after the divorce. While no longer legally bound, they couldn’t let go of intimacy; Regina thought it was best they both start dating again to avoid any more future contact.

But, when it came to Emma, Regina never found it in herself to do the right thing.

Emma stepped forward and pushed Regina back into the side of the door, enough so that the brunette audibly gasped as her back hit the cold metal. They both watched as their breath mingled in the frigid air; coming together and then dissipating again, not unlike their relationship to each other.

“She’ll see you,” Regina narrowed her eyes at Emma. “Didn’t we talk about this?" 

“Not from this angle, _dear_.”

Regina almost couldn’t keep a straight face as Emma shot her a shit-eating smirk, the one that could make her do just about anything, make her cave into whatever new scheme Emma had cooked up. The familiar buzz traveled from Regina’s chest to her inner thighs, and she let out a low moan, giving away that she was falling into Emma’s trap.

“You can’t do this to me anymore, Emma,” Regina whispered. “It’s over, we’re done-”

Emma silenced her with a brief kiss, nipping a little at Regina’s bottom lip, teasing her, a mix of fear and hope rising in her belly as she thought of Rose catching them in the act. Regina nearly gave in with her tongue before her nostrils flared in disgust. Putting a hand on Emma’s chest, she shoved her back roughly and straightened her coat.

“Are you _smoking_ again?” she hissed, wiping at her mouth, hard eyes staring directly into Emma’s jade ones. “Actually, I don’t care. You can throw your life away again, dear, don’t let me get in the way.” She pushed Emma back a few steps farther so she could open the car door and sit in the warmth.

“I’m going to try and contact my son, and then you can let him know who exactly will be picking him up once this storm clears,” Regina stated matter-of-factly. “And then perhaps after Christmas we can have a little sit-down with the judge and re-discuss the custody plans? I believe this violates the arrangements we have _in writing,_ so you’d best come prepared with a good explanation.”

She shot Emma a copy of Emma’s own signature smirk, and slammed the door shut before her wide-eyed ex-wife could protest her threats. Emma heard the doors lock and watched as Regina picked up her phone to call their son.

“ _Fuck_ you, Regina!” Emma yelled, loudly enough to get through the tempered glass. She stomped back to her own SUV, nearly slipping on the frozen ground. Plopping down into the driver’s seat, she rested her forehead on the wheel, practicing the mind-calming she learned all those years ago when things got bad. Rose looked on worriedly, and silently prayed for the snow to stop so they could make it home before Emma got any worse.

Meanwhile, Regina was busy clenching her phone in her hand, wondering how exactly to handle her son and his traitorous behavior. She stared ahead at the SUV, which still hadn’t driven off. She wasn’t surprised – the threat she had hurled at Emma had likely hit home, even if it was one of her classic empty ones, and Emma always needed time to process the cruelty she endured, even if they were no longer married.

Taking a deep breath, she tapped Henry’s contact name and waited one, two, three rings before the boy had the sense to pick up.

“Hi Mom!” Henry’s voice cracked at the end, a telltale sign that he knew trouble was ahead.

"Save it, Henry,” Regina snapped. “I was on my way to get you, and literally ran into your mother on the way. So you’ll get to wait a little longer, I suggest you use that time to come up with a reasonable excuse for you going behind my back.”

Regina heard her 16-year-old sigh over the phone. “Mom, I knew you’d want to come get me, that’s why I asked Ma to instead, she doesn’t, like, flip out like you do when you worry.”

Pinching the side of her nose, Regina pushed herself to let go of the anger and the anxiety. It wasn’t worth the extra toll on her dormant emotions, which were closer than ever to the surface with her ex-wife twenty feet away.

“Are you and Ma okay though?” Henry asked timidly, sounding again like the young kid he was, the adult façade receding when it came to his parents.

“We’re okay, darling. Don’t worry. We’ll get you home soon.”


	3. Something That We're Not

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One lets go while another holds on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tell me somTHIN' good- or bad, witty, sad...gimme your words of wisdom, people.

The next four hours ticked by painfully slowly. By mid-evening the snow had stopped save for light flurries, easing the burden of driving back. A state trooper and a tow truck came along, and Emma, Rose and Regina were on the way to pick up Henry without any more bumps. Emma insisted she and her girlfriend come along, despite the earlier battle, to make sure Henry was okay and to simply see him.

Every other weekend was never enough for Emma; she agreed to that arrangement because she wanted as far away from possible from Regina, and she couldn’t force her son to travel to Boston twice a week. Now the decision was regrettable, having had to cancel some weekends due to work or weather issues. Picking up Henry from the ski resort was an ill-advised plan to have even two hours with her son, and Regina likely wouldn’t let her forget how badly she messed up.

Both worse-for-wear vehicles pulled into the Mifflin mansion’s driveway, the streets quiet and empty due to the late hour. As Emma parked behind Regina, Rose moved to get out of the car but Emma held out a hand to stop her.

“We can just say a quick goodbye and get outta here,” Emma said wistfully. “Been a long day.”

“You drove all this way to see Henry, Emma,” Rose said. “We’re coming in.” She unbuckled her seatbelt and opened the car door, making her way toward the other half of the broken Swan-Mills family in the garage.

Emma swore under her breath and noticed her hands were shaking. She shook them vigorously, ignoring the sweat that had begun to trickle down her back and followed Rose out of the car. The woman had confidence, she’d give her that, but it was foolish to assume Regina would offer any sort of consolation after the kind of day they had.

“Kid, need a hand?” Emma tried to keep her voice light and steady as she offered a forced smile toward her son, who was gathering things out of the trunk. “You’ve got to be tired from the chaos today.”

“Sure, Ma,” Henry said, tired but bright green eyes meeting his mother’s matching pair. Emma instantly relaxed as she looked at him; something about having the rare chance to mother someone broke down Emma’s natural defenses.

Regina was standing by the garage door and caught Emma’s look, and she had to force herself not to melt at the sight. Co-parenting seemed like a foreign concept now, even if both women had found other partners. The memory of being a lonely single mother crossed Regina’s mind, and it was Emma’s turn to notice the change in her ex-wife’s expression as she and Henry made their way to the door. Regina quickly looked away and turned to fumble with her keys to the house.

Before Regina had a chance to lead the way inside, the door swung open and her fiancée brightened at the disjointed group.

“Hey guys!” Ruby said cheerfully. “Hi babe,” she said to Regina, giving her a quick peck on the lips in greeting. “Did we all survive this really terrible idea of rescuing Henry in a snowstorm?”

Regina chuckled dryly and rolled her eyes. “You could say that, and thanks for the support.”

She moved past Ruby into the foyer, hanging up her coat. She didn’t feel like listening to her younger partner catch up with Emma and the redhead, even if it would keep the peace. Ruby wasn’t one for picking sides; Regina preferred all-out war. 

***

Ruby casually chatted with Rose in the living room, giving Emma a free moment to say goodnight to Henry. The teenager had tiredly slumped his way upstairs without saying much to anyone, Regina following suit, excusing herself from painful small talk with unwelcome guests.

Henry was half-asleep as Emma walked into his room and sat on the side of his bed. She brushed her hand down his cheek, chuckling at the slight groan she received.

“Ma, s’tired…”

“I know, kid,” Emma said softly, laying her hand on his shoulder. “I just rarely get to say ‘night to you these days.” Henry opened one eye, lifting the corner of his mouth in a small smile.

“Love you.”

Emma felt tears spring to her eyes, hoping the shadows in the room hid them from sight. She wondered if it was normal to have her heart break anytime she looked at the kid she somehow always managed to leave behind.

“Love you too, kid.”

Emma tiptoed across the room and closed the door, confident that the boy would sleep like the dead until noon the next day. Chuckling to herself, Emma moved to go back downstairs when out of the corner of her eye she noticed a figure standing near the window in her old bedroom.

Regina was hugging herself, arms clutching tightly to the silk pajamas Emma was never allowed to borrow. Her head hung low to her chest, and even through the cracked-open door, Emma could see her ex-wife was crying.

Edging the door open with her palm and begging her slightly trembling hands to stay silent, Emma slipped inside the bedroom, trying not to notice the different duvet or the freshly painted walls (an odd green color that Emma would never have even suggested). Inching closer to her ex-wife, she felt her heartstrings come undone watching Regina’s shoulders bob up and down, heaving with a sadness Emma knew well.

“Emma.” The brunette’s usually confident tone was shrouded in a near-whisper, face covered with a hand bearing a flashy engagement ring, yet another item Emma wouldn’t have dared to bring back to Regina. Emma tried not to wince at the way it caught the light.

Regina let her arms fall to her sides as Emma pressed against her back, lightly touching the curve of Regina’s hips. Dark hair eventually fell onto Emma’s chest as Regina leaned back, still hiccupping from crying.

“We can never go back to us, Emma,” Regina whispered. Emma stiffened, even though she knew her ex was right. “We can’t save each other anymore.”

“I know,” Emma said, desperately trying to hold back what she ended up saying every time they ended in each other’s embrace. In the end, it wasn’t worth the fight.

“I still love you.”

Regina broke into sobs again then, not caring about who was downstairs or who had given her a new ring. Emma wrapped strong arms around her middle and pressed her nose against Regina’s neck, whispering declarations of love as she kissed the soft skin. Her hands moved further south as Regina’s grasped onto thick blonde strands, the pair lost in themselves again; just like old times.

“Regina? Emma?”

Regina started, pulling Emma’s hair harder than intended. “Ow!”

“…Everything ok up there?” If Ruby suspected the exes’ infidelity, her voice didn’t betray it. A tiny part of Regina felt grateful for her fiancée, despite the situation, and that snapped her back into reality.

Moving roughly past Emma, Regina made a motion for her to stay put while she dealt with Ruby.

“I’m quite all right, dear; I haven’t seen Emma, perhaps she’s waiting for Rose in the car?” Regina said with her Oscar-worthy sweet façade. “She never was much for mingling.”

Emma rolled her eyes, glaring at the brunette’s back as she led her fiancée on a blonde goosechase to put her off their trail. _Typical, throwing me under the bus. The irony._

Regina shut the door and turned to look at her ex with a small smile on her face. The blonde had never stopped being beautiful, and her physical prowess tempted Regina to no end, but the former Mrs. Swan-Mills had made up her mind: this had to end tonight.

Emma knew before Regina could even get a word out. “Don’t sweat it, Regina. You’re about to tell me it has to end, that tonight is the last night, blah blah.” She crossed the room then, planting her feet directly in front of Regina, effectively pinning her against the door. “But I know that’s not true, and so do you.”

 _She isn’t wrong,_ Regina thought to herself. The many, many other times she threatened to end the affair never lasted, but tonight was a close call, and someday it would all blow up in their faces. It may land them back together, but only for a short while, and Emma had everything to do with the latter.

“No, Emma, this actually is it,” Regina stated calmly, eerily so, enough for Emma to lean away. Regina only had to deliver a final blow before she shoved Emma out of her house and her life for good.

“I recall the many times you left me and returned, only to bring back some more messes to clean up. I can’t have Henry around that anymore. _I_ can’t have that be a part of my life again,” she continued. “And we may both know our…feelings aren’t quite gone, but I for one know that my patience for your issues has almost completely been erased.”

Regina was fully in Emma’s face now, her dark eyes flickering with anger and power. Emma’s returned to their perpetual apologetic state as she opened her mouth to challenge her ex. “You have no _idea_ what-”

“Save it, Emma. Don’t try to lie to me about your condition. I know what it looks like when you haven’t had something to take the edge off for a while.” Regina had transitioned into her regal-esque, cool tone, the one that could shrink Emma into the younger, timid version of herself 18 years ago.

Regina grasped the door handle then and stepped out into the hallway. She shot Emma a look full of pity mixed with disgust; Regina never could muster sympathy for anyone other than their son.

“You can’t keep dragging the past with you, Emma Swan. Eventually it’ll go away, but not until everyone else has first.” Regina turned on her heel and headed down the stairs, too afraid to watch her words rip apart what little love they had salvaged from all those years ago.


End file.
